I like the “God bless” part. First JC gets invoked in the TP wars and now God is invoked as a splash guard? Do these people really thing that a supreme being is going to be lurking in ladies rooms? Please get a double grip people (or should it be peeple?)

Well, there is that whole “Do unto others” thing and being considerate and not leaving pee all over the seat does qualify. I mean, you wouldn’t want someone to do it to you, so why would you do it to someone else?

Actually, if God is omnipresent, He would be. Which is why it was freaky getting off when I was Catholic. Now I can do anything I damn well please cuz He’s not lurking over my shoulder, watching me play.

Yeah, that’s what the seat covers are for. Failing that, there’s usually tp if you’re that hung up about it. But realistically the toilet seat is probably actually one of the cleanest parts of a restrooms most of the time. I swear, in their hysterics to remain clean themselves women create disgusting bathrooms. Seriously, wtf? I don’t want to sit on your pee. At least wipe it up you slatternly trollop.

I’m inclined to agree most of the time, because really who the heck pees on the seat? But in this case, not so much. No one has peed on the toilet seat, it’s the water splash from the auto-flush. Chances are, people aren’t hanging around waiting for it to finish flushing to check if there’s water to wipe up. And they shouldn’t have to. If it’s such an issue, then they need to have the water pressure adjusted.

And not all bathrooms provide seat covers. Covering the seat in TP is wasteful and could potentially clog the toilet. Also, seat covers aren’t meant to protect the -seat- from your pee, but to protect -you- from any bacteria that may be left on the seat from someone else. Like their pee.

We had this problem at one of my previous offices. Yes, we also had overactive flushers, but those produced a few, CLEAR drops — the large volume of YELLOW drops were obviously a hoverer who squirted left.

After a few ineffective rounds of twee little “if you sprinkle…” notes, we finally put one up that said, “If you’re not going to sit on the seat anyway, put it up, or wipe it off when you’re done. Nobody wants to sit in your pee.” Apparently that got the message across.

I am Team Note Writer all the way on this one, and I particularly like the “raised by wolves” option.

How silly. Of course it would solve something: it would dry the seat. Not only that, but unless the next person intends to sit in the wetness, they’re going to do it. Where do you suppose they’ll put the paper?

The point being that if Person A cleans up the seat with toilet paper and throws it into the toilet, it’s going to flush again, spray again, and create a neverending cycle. (Yes, this toilet pressure issue should probably be fixed.) Sure, Person B will still wipe up the water and throw the TP in the toilet, but that will be one flush total for her, rather than a dozen flushes to fix other flushes.

“How silly. Of course it would solve something: it would dry the seat. Not only that, but unless the next person intends to sit in the wetness, they’re going to do it. Where do you suppose they’ll put the paper?”

The original suggestion is to mop up the seat after it got splashed from the automatic flusher when you are leaving the stall.
When you put the toilet paper from doing this into the toilet, it would trigger the automatic flushing again and re-wet the seat.
So no, it wouldn’t solve the problem of the next person coming in having a wet seat.

The hole in your logic is that dropping toilet paper into the toilet doesn’t trigger the automatic flusher — it’s an infrared (in most systems) sensor set to detect an object about where an adult back rests when the toilet is in use, not a sensor inside the bowl that would detect paper dropping in. If the toilet flushes, and then you wipe the seat and drop the paper in, you get a toilet bowl with a little paper floating in it, not another flush. So wiping the seat after flushing would indeed solve the wet-seat problem.

Not that I think it’s reasonable to expect people to hang around to see if there’s splashback. If the droplets on the seat are clear, assume it’s an overactive flusher and wipe it before you sit down. If they’re yellow, on the other hand… it ain’t the flusher. Eww.

Do you know what’s dirtier than that toilet seat you refuse to sit on? Your desk, the kitchen at work, the hand rail leading down to the subway, the pole you hang onto on the bus, the book you took out of the library, the door leading into Neiman Marcus, and money. On the plus side, none of those things have puddles of urine on them because someone refuses to touch them.

Yeah, except you don’t put your ass / thighs on any of those things; you touch them with your hands – which you can wash immediately once you’re done. Unless the bathroom also has a bidet, you’re stuck with it until you get home to shower.

As a person who once had to clean (shitty) restaurant toilets, I can testify that people to gross and disgusting things in the stalls. The only time I ever sat on one was right after I finished disinfecting it.

Besides, from a cleaner’s perspective, it makes absolutely no difference at all whether you hover or not because they have to clean the whole area anyway.

Be that as it may, hover, sit, it’s an individual’s choice. All we sitters ask is that the hoverers clean up after themselves. The bulk of the disgusting mess left behind on toilets is left behind by them.

The ass/ thighs that have touched the toilet seat don’t then go on put food in your mouth etc.
It’s the hoverers that make the damned mess in the first place.

Just sit down and be done with. Do you have any idea how many germs are on the keyboard that you are touching right now? Loads more than a toilet seats. Toilet seats are cleaned frequently with bleach or disinfectant? When was the last time you did that to your keyboard?
Some who didn’t wash their hands after visiting the toilet may have touched it!
Also, hovering may lead to bladder infections as you will leave urine in your urethra

You don’t touch your face with your butt. You don’t eat with your butt. You don’t handle things other people will put in their faces with your butt.

The spot that touches the toilet seat? Probably the cleanest spot of your whole body…unless you just sat in someone else’s squat splashback. If you shower on a regular basis you’re not going to catch ANYTHING from sitting on the seat, unlike all the minor illnesses we catch regularly from touching everyday objects someone else might touch with their hands.

Kate, at the place I used to work, toilets were disinfected once a day and were periodically spot cleaned. Unless someone would vomit or shit all over the floor there was no way in hell that bathroom was getting disinfected twice.

I don’t know what magical bathrooms you frequent, but the ones I go to always have soap in them thereby enabling me to regularly wash my hands in there. And although I haven’t actually tried this out, I am pretty sure people would find it objectionable if I tried to wash my thighs / ass in the bathroom sink. If you honestly believe that the hoverers are the ones who leave the biggest messes in the bathroom, you haven’t seen a truly filthy bathrooms.

And since you asked about my keyboard, I keep a spray bottle of 70% rubbing alcohol with me on my desk at work and at home. So it does get disinfected regularly, not only because of germs but because I have oily skin that messes up the keyboard.

P.S. Stop making stuff up to further prove your point. Hovering does not cause bladder infections or prolapses or scrofula or anything else. Having your thighs touch someone else’s urine will not harm you because urine is sterile. But that doesn’t mean it’s not disgusting or that some people value having a clean butt as well as clean hands. All the (self-reported) hoverers I know put the seat up.

You do know that by using as much rubbing alcohol as you do(being you keep it by your keyboard), that you are actually making your body immune to it? It doesn’t do you any good unless you use it sparingly – such as hiking, or in instances where you do not have a sink to wash your hands in.

Good grief were you people in Michelle Bachmann’s home school science class? Rubbing alcohol is not the same thing as antibiotic-laden soap. Rubbing alcohol is just that – the 70% or 90% alcohol you can find in any drug store. It will not make your body “immune” to it any more than drinking a bottle of wine every day will make you “immune” to being shitfaced afterwards.

Kate, if you’re going to support your argument, actually support your argument instead of linking to a site written by a nobody. The legitimate medical community has been quite clear that hovering does not cause any disease. Just like they’ve been clear about vaccines and mental retardation.

“You do know that by using as much rubbing alcohol as you do … , that you are actually making your body immune to it?”

Even if that were true (which it isn’t), what would it matter? It’s not the user’s body they’re trying to affect, but the bodies of the germs, viruses, and other alleged critters infesting their keyboard.

Rubbing alcohol isn’t something germs can develop immunity to. That’s why it still works after so many years of being on the market. And bodily immunity to it? You must be the one who took science from Bachmann. And while hovering doesn’t cause disease, sitting on a dirty toilet seat isn’t very likely to transmit anything, either, barring recent effluvia. Unless you’re in the habit of grabbing your naked ass before you eat, anyway.

CB, “increased tolerance” refers to the drinker’s perception of how well they hold their liquor. Most alcoholics think they can hold their liquor very well indeed. To other (sober) people / cops with breathalyzers they’re still just as as drunk.

My basis for this is personal use following spinal surgery and a detailed 30-minute conversation with a published professor of pharmacology
from whom I happened to buy some furniture (All Hail Craigslist!).

Her specialty was not urinalysis or any other form of drug testing,
so although I am confident that her articles were peer reviewed,
I cannot say if they were pee-er reviewed.

*No germs were killed in the making of this post. (It’s PEETA friendly.)

No. While a habitual drinker will in fact have the same BAC as a non-drinker after the same number of drinks, the habitual drinker will not be “as drunk” as a non-drinker.

A guy who drinks a bottle of wine every night for three years will have the same BAC as a non-drinker after drinking a bottle of wine, but will (in most cases) be in far better shape than a non-drinker who has drunk a whole bottle of wine.

If I had to choose which one to be on the road near that night, I’d choose the habitual drinker.

How many times a day do you touch a doorknob with your hands? How many times a day do you touch a doorknob with your butt? Unless someone is habitually not washing their ass and then hovering so that their pee sprinkles all over the seat, there is less bacteria on that toilet seat than there is on the doorknob you’ll have to touch to leave the bathroom anyway.

Suck it up and sit down, or at least have the decency to clean up your urine from the seat for the next person.

@ CB & kermit
I don’t have any studies to back up CB’s assertion, but I have my personal (yes, it’s ‘anecdotal’ compared to a rigorous double or triple-blind study) experience to draw on. Years ago I would often have 3-5 drinks over the course of an evening/night…these days I seldom have more than 2/week. There is a difference, a serious difference.
I am sure the difference would be easy to demonstrate under proper testing alchohprotocols . I am willing to bet that few, if any, serious tests have been carried out. (After all, they would have to provide 365 bottles of wine per test subject per year, a non-trivial expense. OK, half that number if they are only letting 50% imbibe.)
In the interest of science
and of getting to the heart of the matter,
I hereby offer my cortex.

I’m guessing that if you respond to CB’s ‘on the road’ hypothetical with something to the effect that (over a large population) the two drivers are functionally equivalent, then you and I do not share the same anecdotal profile…or else your experience with ‘cheap drunks’ and/or very heavy drinkers is statistically deviant from that of the average citizen.

None of the preceding is intended as any sort of slam, so if it sounds that way, it’s my fault for trying to finish before leaving for a short day-trip.
I have a colleague who could say it more simply and accurately, but I believe she’s working undercover at the moment.

The Seat Pee-ers are almost as bad as the mysterious woman who spends 15 minutes building a “nest” out of single squares of TP so her precious, pristine hindquarters don’t make seat contact. Then she leaves her ass-gasket behind for the next user to enjoy.

I’m a hoverer. I’ve always wiped up any errant whizz… and then someone mentioned to me a couple of years ago that if people are gonna not-sit to use a toilet, they should put the seat up like other not-sitters do. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before, but now I put the seat up if I’m gonna hover, and then put it back down again when I’m done.

Forget whizz, I’ve seen WAY too many smears of inadequately-wiped-up period blood, and even poo, on toilet seats to sit on one without papering it first, or hovering. Y’all can sit your asses down on that all you want but I’ll opt out, thanx.

Thank you for being considerate. It’s just gross that so many don’t wipe up. THOSE are the ones that bother me. I don’t mind hovering in and of itself if the person wipes. Thanks on behalf of anyone who’s had to wipe pee off of toilets.

We have a country-western bar here with a special stall “for real cowgirls only” that is basically a hover-er urinal. It’s regularly a much nastier place to be than the regular stalls, unfortunately, as a bar is one of the few places I would consider hovering.

hmm it might be cleaner in your home but i doubt a public toilet is cleaner than all those things you’ve mentioned – the puddle of urine being the big giveaway! plus I’m sure no one was ever caught crabs or herpes off of a library book.

“catching” anything off of a toilet seat isn’t just a misconception, these days it’s stupidity. No one has ever contracted a disease from a toilet seat, since it is an unfriendly environment for them. Studies have proven that you’re infinitely more likely to contract a virus or disease due to a handshake.

I’m pretty sure no one ever caught crabs off a toilet seat, either, and that’s a hokey urban legend that people regurgitate to rationalize hovering. Bet you didn’t know that hovering can cause uterine prolapse?!?

Also, it’s your ass. You’re not gonna fucking eat off of it. Hoverers cause the exact problems for the next patron that they themselves are trying to avoid.

The chances of contracting herpes from a toilet seat after someone with herpes uses the toilet seat is incredibly low. The infected person using the toilet seat first would have to rub his/her infected area on the toilet seat, and then the person following would have to rub his/her genitals on the same area of the toilet seat immediately thereafter to contract the virus. Even so, the chances are still very low because the following person may not coming into direct contact with the infected area, as could happen during sexual activity.

Crystal, if you’re going to cite facts, please don’t discredit yourself by making stuff up about hovering causing uterine prolapse.

There are plenty of places in the world where the toilet is just a hole in the floor / ground so you have no choice but to squat / hover because there is no toilet seat or any seat at all. Amazingly, no south east Asian person has ever had developed a uterine prolapse as a result of having to squat.

Do you really think there’s a “natural position” to pee in? I’m pretty sure you can pee no matter what position you happen to be in as soon as you can’t hold it any longer.
Pee is flexible like that, and I don’t think it cares whether you’re sitting, squatting, hovering, standing or passed out drunk and prostrate…you’re gonna piss.

Actually… all of this reminds me that I read something at some point that suggested that as far as pooping (admittedly not peeing) goes doing so sitting on the toilet can injure muscles because, evolutionarily, we are trained to squat. I don’t remember where I read it and I don’t remember if it’s reputable but it does make some sense. Also, gyn told me you can get herpes from a toilet seat while pushing the HPV vaccine… Sort of a “you should be vaccinated even if you are married and in a monogamous relationship because of toilet seats!”. I decided the risk was too low to worry about and skipped the vaccine. But, point is, according to a random Internet article and greedy drug manufacturers, it is not healthy to sit while purging and you CAN get the herp from toilet seats.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/squat-poop/ Admittedly not a “reputable” site, but funny. According to this author, squatting to defecate can prevent unnecessary straining, hemorrhoids, maybe even colon cancer! However, the one website addressing urination and squatting or hovering suggested it increases the chances for UTIs. Go figure.

I was in France once, and had to stop at a roadside rest room. The stalls had no bowl at all — just a porcelain hole with two molded spaces for feet. Maybe that’s what we need here in the US, to teach a few people a lesson. Of course, that would make life inconvenient for all of the law-abiding citizens, as always seems to happen

I am a guy, so I have no dog in the fight at hand, however, when sitting to take care of business, I always first dry the seat (trust me, men are worse at spraying the seat) with a giant wad of TP, then build a 3-4 layer thick TP nest before I sit.
I always dispose of said nest before I leave the stall. and then thoroughly wash my hands before I leaave the room, and grab an etra towel to open the door with. I have seen way too many people just wealtz right out of the bathroom, even after using a stall.

pg, you have a knack for boiling off extraneous word-molecules that
would get in the way of the simple truth. Reading you makes me smile.

How’s this for a bumper sticker version:Gerunds aren’t the P-problem, nouns are.

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness,
but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Since you are a Physics enthusiast, I’ll let you in on a secret….
Erwin Schrodinger managed to isolate gravitons back in the late 1930′s.
He constructed a litter box for his famous feline, now quite mature, who had survived a number of chancy escapes from that other casino cage.
Ever the gimmick-meister, old Erwin couldn’t resist equipping the litter box with his newly isolated gravitons, giving it the ability to hover about a meter off the ground.
The hovering was a novelty that did not sit well with the cat, who would, well, sit, hovering in the box, eyes closed and taking care of business.
One day there was a malfunction…something happened to the gravitons
in the hovering module, and the cat/box duality up and disappeared.
Calculations later determined not only that the cat had been transported to a spot near Tau Ceti, but that the trip had taken place at near-light speed, such that when the cat/box reappeared a few minutes later, the old cat, ever the obedient servant of the laws of physics, just wasn’t the same.

Erwin called and related the details of the long, strange trip* to his young friend Sally Bowles, who got the house band at the Kit Kat Club to work up a tune to celebrate the cat’s safe return, which was named, of course…http://bit.ly/rJBbUE

So Im in an industry that deals with cross contamination and bodily fluids. I have to take classes regularly on such subjects. Here are a few facts to keep in mind.
1. Generally speaking, the door handle in the bathroom exit is the filthiest thing in the bathroom. Statistically, most people either do not wash their hands or do so poorly. Properly washing your hands involves not recontaminating them by touching a door knob, or spigot.
2. Urine is sterile until it passes through the urethra, where it picks up epithelials and bacteria. The bacteria cause the odor.
3. If everybody would just sit down, there would be nothing on the seat to contaminate it, therefore there would be no germs on your thighs or buttocks.
4. Even if there were some small level of contamination on your thighs or buttocks, it is inconsequential to the amount of contamination on your phone which touches both your face and your hands.
5. To be clear, alcohol is an inadequate sanitizer. It is good for cleaning wounds, removing oils, which contain germs, from your skin, but for true sanitation of hard surfaces, nothing less than bleach is adequate.
Lastly, I have seen some of the disgusting disasters in women’s rooms. I can attribute them all to not sitting down. See #3

Well Rabbit, I’m with you on some points – mainly the door knob issue. I NEVER touch the door knob without a napkin on the way out of a public bathroom. However, I will NEVER sit on a public toilet seat as some measure to make it cleaner for all of us. If I sprinkle when I tinkle, yeah, I wipe the seat, but I see sitting down on the seat as the equivalent of pressing buttocks to buttocks with every other human who has sat down on it since the last time it was sanitized. No thanks.

But the odds against someone catching a disease that way are astronomical. (No pun intended.) Pathogens generally need to get in through an orifice to do any damage. So unless you’re rubbing one of those up against the seat, you’re pretty safe.

Rubbing nostrils and lips with every one of your coworkers will get you sick a whole lot faster, because that’s straight orifice-to-orifice. But we keep using our workplace telephones, ne?

I get your point, Haterade. I’m less worried about disease than just the general lack of cleanliness. People expect public toilet seats to be contaminated already, so many people obviously don’t take care to clean up after themselves. There always gonna be people who leave behind their own trinkets. I don’t want to leave with traces of other people’s bio breaks on my body, even if it doesn’t kill me. Sure, there are traces everywhere, pretzel baskets at the bar, the handle of a shopping cart, the buttons on an ATM. We can’t completely prevent contact, but we do what we can. For me, that includes washing my hands often and not sitting on public toilet seats.

It’s odd when you think too that we will all happily sleep in a hotel bedroom where people have slept or had sex without a worry.
Yes the sheets have been changed, but how many people have had sex on that mattress?

I don’t understand why people feel a need to hover in the first place. If anything besides the outside of your buttocks/thighs touches the seat, you’re doing it wrong. And as far as I know, there are no diseases transmitted from thigh to thigh.

It isn’t hard to wipe it up- this annoying note should not be necessary. I usually hover as close as I can to the bowl or use two strips of toilet paper on the seat and then flush them. Yeah, I don’t like touching doors either- I use my shoes or a paper bowl to open doors. If I have to touch one I wash my hands afterwards. So far, being a germophobe means that I am rarely sick, and let’s just say that I love it! I don’t make a mess, therefore don’t tell me how to pee!

You’re talking about them as if they were the same, but:
Squatting: butt close to the ground, knees sharply bent) is different from sitting.
Hovering: butt far from the ground, partway between sitting and standing

“squatting/hovering or standing is the way human bodies evolved.”
Squatting, yes. Hovering, no. Hovering tightens up the same muscles that squatting relaxes… in this respect, it’s the opposite of squatting. Sitting isn’t ideal, but it at least leaves those muscles in a neutral state.

for me this is almost a political issue. there are absolutely no decent pro-hovering arguments that don’t have to do with a neurotic, unjustified “squick” reaction that neurotic people feel they’re entitled to a. have and b. treat as valid. as for the “butt-to-butt” contact ickiness… sorry you don’t live in a box, dear, do you pull plastic gloves out every time you shake hands with someone too? get over it

like haterade said, hovering and squatting are COMPLETELY different. hovering = extreme tension of a bunch of muscles and weird angles in intestines. sitting = most muscles relaxed but intestines still at a weird angle. squatting = a bunch of muscles relaxed, intestines angled perfectly for emitting poo, and your pee goes straight downwards. holes in the ground are by far the most optimal toilet design! squatting is awesome! if only america/canada would catch on!

“Butt-to-butt contact ickiness” has no relation to handshaking. I don’t want traces of your piss on my body, whether it’s on the hand or the thigh or the butt. It’s nasty. Would you wash your arm if you got someone’s piss on it? Of course you would. Hey, if you want to sit on my piss, go right ahead, but don’t be pissed at those of us who don’t want to sit on yours. Get over it.

Damn! I never see these in the ladies’ restrooms. I’d love to add in the third option that applies to me: –> [If nobody else is in the bathroom I stand up, because I am a shemale...but at least I'm smart enough to lift the lid first.]